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The headlines about the enrollment booms at community colleges are accurate, as far as they go. But I realized yesterday that they leave out part of the story. Locally, our credit-bearing programs are bursting at the seams. The library is literally standing-room-only at peak hours; veteran staff tell me they've never seen that before. English as a Second Language is through the roof.

Have you guys seen Microsoft's video on technology enabled collaborative learning?The video description reads:What if learning was an adventure? What if we could cross the boundaries of language, location, and devices? This video presents a vision for a learning experience that is more collaborative with easy sharing of information. Microsoft technologies aim to deliver a seamless flow between lifestyle and learning, and new ways to collaborate.

State workers here are required to take and pass an annual, online, ethics refresher course (it takes 30-60 minutes), and state university employees are no exception. The format has varied over time, but the requirement inevitably draws complaints. Since money is always tight, and the state employs many people, the course's design has been one-size-fits-all.

(Music for the drive in this morning was Mulgrew Miller's Landmarks. His playing is remarkably expressive through a very wide range of styles, and this album (assembled from three different session, each with different personnel) is remarkably well-balanced.)

We celebrated Thanksgiving here in Canada not long ago, and I spent the holiday weekend in deep contemplation and reflection about all I have and where my life has brought me. Aside from the obvious things for which I feel thankful — health (a big one this year), family, home, and food on the table — I feel particularly grateful for the invaluable time I can spend with my children in their young years.

My college, like so many others, has tried to deal with the Great Recession by having a series of public meetings about what's most important to us. The idea has been to give stakeholders from around campus -- including students -- input before decisions are made, so the decisions can be made with a clearer sense of what we all think matters. No secret decisions, no hidden agendas, no "why weren't we consulted?" objections. And some of the conversations have been wonderfully productive, with a surprising degree of consensus around a couple of major issues.

Learning tech needs some new blood. We need to recruit young people to go into our discipline (actually - we need to define our discipline - but that is a larger debate). We need to encourage people in their twenties to work in academic technology units, to join learning tech companies, and to start their own learning technology companies.

As I was driving into work this morning, I was listening to Cyrus Chestnut's "Dark Before the Dawn" -- one of my favorite piano trio CDs.Stood on its head, that title seemed to sum up my mood after reading the latest special report from the WBGU (which stands for either "German Advisory Council on Climate Change" or "Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveraenderungen", depending on whom you ask).

Out-of-state students!According to this article, several state university systems are now considering making deliberate moves to increase the proportion of out-of-state students, specifically to capture the tuition premium. The idea is to replace lost state subsidy support.I won't address the logic at the university level. But at the cc level, this would be political suicide.